Lines 19-27 Summary

Lines 19-22 

The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling.

• The strangeness of the scene is such that the boy almost laughs before realizing that he has grotesquely lacerated his hand. 
• Horrifyingly, the boy almost pleads with his family to stop his hand from bleeding. Frost uses "life" in place of blood to imply the seriousness of the injury. 
• Notice how Frost chooses which senses to employ here. The boy is clearly in that first second after an injury when the pain hasn't hit your brain yet, but you see what has happened. There's no scream, no yelling—it's that shocked, abbreviated, horrifyingly wrong noise of laughter.

Lines 22-25

Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled.

• These lines continue the discussion begun earlier in the poem about a boy doing a man's work. The boy is still a boy, but he's old enough to realize the severity of his injury. 
• Again, Frost is the master of perfectly placed colloquialisms—the nickname "big boy" is contrasted with the work he was doing and the injury he sustains. 
• Notice here how Frost does not use the phrase, "All was lost." Spoiled is an adjective used in reference to food gone bad, or an activity ruined. It implies a point of no return, but it could also be the same adjective the boy's father would use if he had done a poor job of cutting the wood. We're left to wonder about how the boy's family might view this event. Let's read on.

Lines 25-27 

"Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.

• So we know what happens when you sustain an injury that serious. You start to live tweet. No, no—you need medical attention, stat. Instead of routinely describing that process, Frost blends the happenings. The boy utters the line, "Don't let him cut my hand off," and the repetition here helps us to understand the pain the boy is in.
• What's the purpose of the "So." in line 27? Notice how it stops the poem in its tracks. It's so final, brief, and cut off. The idea is to interrupt the line, just as the boy has been interrupted. It serves to let us know that the boy's hand has been amputated, and also in a crueler sense dismisses the boy's objections to the operation. 
• Notice how much of an impact the simple phrase, "But the hand was gone already" has on the poem. Sheesh. And we thought Robert Frost was a simple country poet who liked fences.